Cognitive dissonance among conservatives often seems not much less than among progressives. To my taste, too many conservatives want freedom of political and economic advocacy, so long as any advocacy of values that has a religious connection is tightly constrained. Too many dislike hierarchical collectivism, but find little need to regulate hierarchical corporatism -- even corporatism that goes international to the point of undermining our politics at home. Too many want defense of our borders, but have little concern for how to constrain free trade from enriching existential threats to our values for political, moral, and religious expression. Too many want to draw down the centralized and elitist power that is exercised in the beltway, but seem oblivious to any connection between disproportionate political power and disproportionate accumulation of wealth, for international powers and corporatists to buy and sell governments as commodities.
If all other countries were like the individual states of our union, perhaps the mainline conservatism that is extant would make more sense. But the world is not like that. Rather, the world presents an existential challenge between diametrically opposing philosophies – one of law for promoting individualism, the other of despotism for promoting collectivism. For either one of these models of civilization to invite too much of the other within its homeland is to ingest increasing risks of fatal poisoning.
Simply put, it is insane to fashion free trade or an “open society” that carelessly tolerates that which is intolerably bent upon the destruction of the homeland. It is insane to choke off homeland production of energy in order to rely on, and enrich, diametrically opposed foreign producers. It is insane to expect to preserve anything above lip service for “one man one vote,” while leaving Congress with notorious loopholes for prostituting its wares.
Whatever the quality or quantity of our current attempts to regulate ordered liberty, decent corporatism, smart trade, and control over how our representatives are chosen, much falls short. A good example of good intentions run awry was the attempt at campaign finance reform. How much of our politics is influenced by the Chinese? But I have not seen a worthwhile comprehensive reform. Rather, every attempt by our untrustworthy Congress to impose any kind of “comprehensive” reform tends to give me a case of the red a$$.
Maybe we could find better piecemeal solutions if we at least began to name and acknowledge some of the sources of duplicity and cognitive dissonance. Good start: Look to who benefits in the current manner of exchange of currency and trade between the U.S. and China. Don't rely only on free trade shibboleths; look also to human depravities.
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From A.T. -- Re: "If we are going to compete with the Chinese, we need to do several things. First, rescind all minimum wage law. Second, eliminate federal government unemployment protection. Third, eliminate all corporate income tax. Fourth, reduce welfare to protect only those who truly can't take care of themselves. Our US companies would be the strongest in the world, once again."
These are lofty goals, but unrealistic to the short term. Meantime, we seem instead to be competing with the Chinese by becoming more and more like a vassal for them, i.e.: more internally centralized in terms of economic control; less individual freedom; uneven playing field internationally; selling country off to the superior mother country (China). Economically, this may work, so long as world leaders remain relatively sane. But what happens in each nation that is ruled by a centralized hierarchy of elitists, rather than by any semblance of consistent law, once the first existential challenge erupts into violent confrontation? China seems to be the winning model during the present state of affairs. So long as that persists, it seems likely to continue to translate into worldwide loss of individual freedom.
In the name of power, there is nothing elitists will not desecrate. In the name of power, there is nothing they will not do to divide and rule. Don't look for any one coherent message from them, apart from division. By pushing the masses into moral anarchy, the elitists make themselves into their own versions of God. However, there is a higher power, or higher values, in respect of which we could loosely assimilate and reduce these villains to more adult supervision. But the way we have allowed ourselves to be led into being preoccupied with being divided and put at one another's throats, with Islamofascism being invited in every now and then to provide cover and crisis that will not be "wasted," it will be a miracle if we manage to put these villains down. Unless we remember that neither they nor we are God, and unless we come together to remember the worthwhile values that are common to us, above our rulers and above our individual greed, then elitist power mongers will yoke us to anarchic evil and confiscate our rights ever again freely to pursue our individual interests.
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